Final week’s resignation of Minnesota Racing Fee chair Dr. Camille McArdle highlights points going through the state’s horse racing and breeding business, together with continued stress between regulators, political management, and tribal gaming pursuits.
An interview with McArdle and others concerned within the Minnesota equine business confirms worries about eroding purses and the state’s present political posture towards horse racing. Because the expiration of a 10-year purse enhancement settlement between Canterbury Park and the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Neighborhood in 2022, Minnesota has struggled to maintain purses aggressive with these of different states, lots of which have gaming to complement purses.
Since that point, purses have almost been minimize in half. In 2022 Canterbury paid out $13,534,819 in purses however in 2025 that quantity was down 46% to $7,315,075. That 2022 season noticed 64 race dates however in 2025 the monitor supplied simply 50.
Canterbury Park CEO and chairman Randy Sampson famous that the Minnesota Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse monitor has wanted to cut back race dates, the variety of races, and the variety of stakes to stay aggressive. The state’s Thoroughbred foal crop, which exceeded 300 yearly from 2004-07, fell to 76 in 2023 after the top of the 10-year purse enhancement settlement. This has made it difficult to fill Minnesota-bred races, Sampson added.
An try by the Minnesota Racing Fee so as to add historic horse racing gaming to complement purses was unsuccessful. After the MRC voted 5-1 in April 2024 to permit Canterbury Park and Operating Aces, a Standardbred monitor, to put in as much as 500 HHR gaming terminals apiece, the MRC got here below hearth. The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Neighborhood and different tribal nations asserted that the fee had overstepped its authority.Join BloodHorse Day by day
State legislation grants tribal nations rights to casino-style playing, equivalent to slot machines. Horse racing pursuits argued that the video games have been pari-mutuel. The fee’s actions prompted authorized motion and legislative backlash, main the state legislature to go a legislation explicitly banning historic horse racing.
Earlier this month, McArdle and different commissioners have been referred to as into the state capitol and rebuked by members of the workplace of Gov. Tim Walz, McArdle mentioned. She mentioned she was informed the MRC’s function was to manage, to not work with coverage to help the state’s racing and breeding sectors. She views the latter as in step with the fee’s mission assertion.Â
“I used to be informed that it was embarrassing after we tried to go historic horse racing,” she mentioned.
That in the end led to her resignation after greater than 30 years on the fee.
Among the many difficulties going through the equine business in Minnesota is the affect of tribal gaming pursuits, significantly throughout the state’s Democratic Get together. Business insiders describe a sample by which coverage adjustments by horse racing pursuits can set off authorized or legislative pushback.Â
Operating Aces complained to the fee about Walz’s appointments of two racing commissioners with ties to tribes: Johnny Johnson, a former Prairie Island Tribal Neighborhood council president, and Melanie Benjamin, a former Mille Lacs Band chief government.
“The governor appointing these two people was a hostile act in my guide,” McArdle mentioned.
Walz’s workplace didn’t reply to e mail requests for remark.
Requested if she discovered Johnson and Benjamin to be honest commissioners, McArdle mentioned she had restricted interactions with Benjamin however discovered Johnson to be pleasant and famous his want to see “extra working along with the tribes than we’ve got had, which I am very a lot for.”
The equine business extra warmly obtained Walz’s current appointments of Michael Vekich and Whitney Place.
Some view Johnson and Benjamin as having a battle of curiosity, a degree expressed by previous MRC administrators, a commissioner, and an legal professional in a letter to the governor, which was learn throughout an MRC fee assembly final yr. The letter was signed by James Lane, former chair; Tom DiPasquale, former government director; Joe Scurto, former deputy director; and Patty Sifferle, former common counsel.
DiPasquale informed BloodHorse this week that the MRC wants “a revitalized, extra energetic fee, and workers management—members of the fee who can see a mutuality of curiosity between tribal gaming and horse racing and acknowledge its significance to the state … and a governor’s workplace and legislative management that’s prepared to try some artistic choices of the type which were utilized in different states to supply help to the racing and breeding pursuits due to its financial affect.”
Walz, a Democrat, can also be working for a 3rd time period subsequent yr and elevating funds for his re-election bid.
Sampson mentioned representatives from Canterbury Park have not had “any significant dialogue” with the governor on key points.
Picture: Courtesy of Canterbury ParkRandy Sampson
Talking of the legislature, Sampson famous that “the Democrat facet will not do something to broaden playing that may be opposed by the tribes, and the Republicans do not wish to do something that entails elevating taxes or (utilizing) common fund cash.”
One path ahead for the equine business can be a sports-wagering invoice that by means of its construction might generate $5 million-$7 million per yr for the Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse purses at Canterbury, based on Sampson. However the same sports-wagering invoice failed final yr, and the composition of the legislature is basically the identical.
Minnesota doesn’t have a unified equine advocacy group similar to the Kentucky Equine Training Venture Basis. KEEP, in addition to horsemen’s organizations, performed a key function in a coordinated coalition that helped safe the passage of a legislation clarifying the legality of historic horse racing in Kentucky after a authorized problem and a court docket defeat. The Kentucky Horse Racing Fee initially authorised historic horse racing.
In Minnesota, advocacy efforts throughout breeds have been sporadic, leaving racetracks, breeders, and horsemen with out a sturdy mechanism to interact lawmakers or construct momentum for long-term options. Nonetheless, agreements such because the prior 10-year purse-boosting take care of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Neighborhood have been secured earlier than and maybe could possibly be secured once more.Â
A proactive fee—paired with constructive engagement between the tracks, tribal nations, and legislature—might pursue purse-support constructions, refined card-room fashions, and even regional ideas equivalent to multistate circuits that broaden horse provide and ease aggressive pressures. Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois might workforce collectively in a circuit below one proposed mannequin.
However such plans should be made with out McArdle, whose roots within the sport got here as a regulatory veterinarian. Walz is tasked with appointing a substitute.
“It is a terrific loss that she selected to resign,” Sampson mentioned. “I do perceive her frustration and the way she felt that this may be the best factor to do so far as making an attempt to boost extra consciousness concerning the plight of the business and the necessity for the legislature and the administration to get behind it, however it’s positively a blow to the business to lose any person with that a lot experience and expertise, and actually only a good one that was a very succesful chief of the fee for a few years.”
